


These Last Days

by tangofox



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Brief mention of ExR, Dirty Protests, IRA style AU, M/M, Prison, Starvation, Violent Protests
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-13
Updated: 2013-08-13
Packaged: 2017-12-23 08:43:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/924260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangofox/pseuds/tangofox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enjolras is a political prisoner, fighting for his, and others rights as human beings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Last Days

Enjolras wanted to do everything peacefully. Of course he understood why things had to be violent, why they had to fight. It hadn't started off that way. Things had once been peaceful, once upon a time they had stood with banners and marched without incident. But then the riot police had come and things started to go downhill quickly. Everything became so ugly.

France had belonged to the European Union since before he was born. He had been told stories as a child of France being a free country, with their independence, their own rules. Stories of when France was French. Now they followed someone else’s rules, it was an empire now. But nobody used that word. Because it wasn't as if a country ruled over them. It was just a board of rich white men, holding all the power this side of the ocean. Even from that young age Enjolras felt so angry about it. Nothing was fair about following someone else rules, about not being a free country. France should have it's own democracy, it's own rules and laws. Laws that were decided by the people of France, the citizens, not some unseen figures in chairs. It was frightening to him.

There hadn't always been riot police and shit-stained walls and broken bones. Enjolras remembers clearly, life on the outside, when things hadn't been so desperate. Enjolras had friends back then. Bahorel and Combeferre were in here with him too. They weren't allowed to speak to each other. He wondered what happened to the rest. God how he spends his days in his filthy cell wanting to sob about Grantaire. It would be so much easier to carry on knowing Grantaire is okay. He doesn't even know if he's alive.

He's not in that cell anymore. He's not protesting and smearing the walls for his rights. Because he doesn't have the energy. Because he's been laid in this bed for weeks and weeks and nothing has passed his lips. He thinks about how Combeferre is dealing with this. He had bought them all a lawyer, back in the days when things were just starting to get rough. That same lawyer was telling Enjolras every other day how he was in the papers. How he was changing things. It was a different fight now, a smaller one. But he was fighting it.

He remembers the first time he sees Prouvaire get smashed over the head with a riot stick. He had been so shocked to hear the sickening sound of the baton hitting the poets skull, all he wanted to do was fight back. But then someone was hitting him too, and he knew, he couldn't do a thing, he couldn’t give them the satisfaction of charging him for assaulting a police officer. He would be peaceful, he kept telling himself. And he was, he was so proud of himself and his friends for that. They stayed peaceful until they had no choice.

He wakes up screaming, his body not having enough nutrition for him to get more than twenty minutes sleep at a time. His skeletal frame hurts every time he moves, and the doctor is telling him he has bronchitis. He's screaming for Grantaire. He's screaming for the others too, for all those he's let down. He was supposed to lead them to an independent France, to a better place. Instead he's serving life for a crimes he shouldn't be serving for, and he's going to die in this hospital bed. His lawyer says Grantaire hadn't been seen since the day they were all arrested. Enjolras just remembers the panic in his eyes. He's forgotten everything else about it.

It was the gun that got him. It was the gun that set everything off and destroyed the Amis. He had never fired it, never taken it out of his little apartment. But while being held after a bad protest they raided his flat. And showed it to him in a little plastic bag with smirks on their faces. He could only see out of one eye, the other swollen too much with blood. They said he shot somebody, a police officer. He went down with his head held high, knowing, there was nothing they could do anymore. His fight here was over. Maybe the Amis would carry on without him. But while awaiting trial he heard about Bahorel being arrested for almost killing an officer with his fists. The dread had set in then because he didn't know if that was truth or lies. 

He had a good lawyer. The state had a better one. They had everything, and just like always, the people had nothing. Enjolras was sent to a political prison, stripped of all human rights, and treated like an animal. He knew he could have had it worse. The charges for the murder didn't stick very well, but he still went down for possessing the gun, for being a political prisoner. They still got him for twenty-five years. It was two weeks before he was protesting for his right to be treated like a human being. It was four weeks into his sentence that he started the filthy protest his name would be in the papers for. They called him an animal, said he deserved to be treated like one. He would act like this, make the prison guards lives hell until he got his rights. Just clothes. Just a phonecall. Just a day where he didn't have to feel a boot in his stomach.

On the last day Combeferre is allowed to visit, in shackles like he's on death row. Enjolras sees him barely, and Combeferre sits silently, then talks quietly, about how the state will break before Enjolras will. Anything to give him hope. His ears feel like their stuffed with cotton wool, and he doesn't even manage to get out Grantaire's name. He hopes he's safe. He hopes, he hopes he's made a difference. He understands that one person can change everything if they try hard enough. And he's not scared to die for France. He hadn't been for a long time.


End file.
